30.05.2001

New England fights back

Dave Craig of the Revolutionary Democratic Group presents his views on Oldham, Britishness and race

I was just wondering if republicanism would make an appearance at this election. The only hope, and a very slim one at that, was a schizophrenic Socialist Alliance. After the manifesto launch, it was reported on the BBC that the SA stood for the abolition of the monarchy, the legalisation of cannabis and the 35-hour week. Two cheers. But later the message focused on more money for good causes - better pensions, more for the NHS and education, etc.

Then, out of the blue, the young people of Oldham delivered the most important election message so far. The masses intervened in the election and spoke to the rest of the country. It was not through the ballot box, but on the streets that the message was delivered. Shame then that there was no SA candidate to amplify it.

Up to 500 young people fought the police for seven hours and succeeded for much of the time in driving them back. The authorities were reportedly shocked by the ferocity of the onslaught and the depths of anger it revealed. The republican youth of new England had spoken.

What was their message? Blair?s royal Britain is a heap of bullshit? New Britain? New Labour? Radical policies? Anti-racism? Democracy? All empty rhetoric, marketing and spin. Bricks and petrol bombs blew it all away. But what this means for old England remains to be contested.

And what feeble utterance came out of Blair?s mouth? He claimed that Oldham was not typical. We are invited to continue believing the carefully manufactured Blair myth of anti-racism, equal opportunity and social justice. And what policies did Blair come up with? Over to Jack Straw. When push comes to shove, there is only one policy Labour supports: her majesty?s constabulary.

Michael Portillo took the same line: ?The situation in Oldham is very ugly and we look to the community leaders to appeal for calm, as they are doing. We look to the police forces to play their part in restoring order? (The Daily Telegraph May 29).

Who was to blame for the situation? Soon the establishment were all singing from the same song sheet. It was the fascists. Jack Straw blamed racial conflict on the intervention in the town of the British National Party. The same line was put forward by chief superintendent Eric Hewitt, head of the Oldham division of the Greater Manchester police.

Undoubtedly the fascists played their part. But the real crime is poverty, poor housing and unemployment, which affects or threatens the whole of the working class. And it is racism that keeps those in poverty divided and fighting amongst themselves. The real criminals are successive Tory and Labour governments responsible for the social conditions in which people are forced to live.

Whilst the story of Oldham is familiar to socialists everywhere, I want to draw different political conclusions. It is not simply the economic foundations we need to consider, but the cultural and constitutional aspects as well.

Oldham has a population of about 220,000, of which 14% are of ?ethnic origin?, mainly from Pakistan and Bangladesh. This minority lives in the poorest housing in almost segregated conditions. Unemployment at 40%, lack of job opportunities, poor education and racial discrimination provide all the combustible material. All that was needed was the spark to set it all off.

Lee Jasper describes growing up in Oldham (The Guardian May 29). Goldwick, where the current battles took place, is in the centre of the town. It was a Caribbean enclave from the 1960s to the mid-1980s. Parents of his generation mostly did shift work at the cotton mills, until Thatcher destroyed much of the manufacturing base. ?Oldham was hard - and extremely hard if you were black,? writes Jasper. You soon learned the ?cultural nuances?. ?Don?t go out with white women in town; stay out of areas such as Filton Hall, Limeside, Sholver and Abbeyhills; have nothing whatsoever to do with the police.?

Police racism, says comrade Jasper, was cruel, violent and unremitting. Random stops and searches were frequent. You expected to be beaten up and if you were not it was grounds for suspicion that you have given them information. Education, employment and policing policies were imbued with a crude racism: ?The experience of my friends who still live in Oldham provides proof. Mental illness is rife. Friends who left school with me in 1976 have never worked. Over half will have become career criminals and those left will be strung out on crack or heroin. A community was devastated by racism, destroyed by lack of opportunity and left to rot in the twilight zone of the urban underclass.?

In recent months racial conflict has been building up. At the end of April, 6,000 Stoke City fans went to Oldham for a vital game. It is alleged that fascist involvement encouraged fans to walk through ethnic areas threatening and abusing the locals. Tension has been building up with reports of violent acts with suspected racist motives. The press made much of an assault by an Asian youth on a white pensioner, whose family said it was not a racially motivated attack.

The activities of the BNP and the National Front have obviously added to a growing climate of fear. They have done everything to fuel the situation and exploit people?s fears. No doubt their presence has been a major factor in encouraging white youth to ?have a go?. But at the same time the fascists are a handy scapegoat for the politicians and police. Blaming the fascists deflects attention from the responsibility of the police and the institutions of the state.

The situation kicked off in Goldwick with a fight outside the Good Taste chippy between two youths - one black and one white. It was then followed with an attack, by a small group of 10 white youths, on people, shops and homes. A witness, Mohammed Sharif, explained that they threw bricks through the windows of a house and a barber?s shop and chased children and threw stones. As news spread, young ?Asians? began arriving in large numbers to defend the community. Very soon this led to confrontation with the police.

Many parallels can be drawn, including the riots in Brixton and Toxteth and elsewhere in the early 1980s. But we might remember the ?no-go? areas in Belfast and Derry when the local community drove off the B-special protestant police. One local resident, Harold Tupman, recalled his days patrolling the Falls Road in Belfast. ?I never thought I would see petrol bombs on my doorstep in my town,? he said. ?Then I had a scout car and a machine gun. Now I have got nothing, only a couple of bricks. They are smashing paving slabs and ripping them to bits like they did in Belfast in 1970? (The Times May 30).

Here is the clue as to how republicans might understand the politics of the situation. A community suffering from oppression, feeling under siege with no trust or confidence in her majesty?s police force, organise their own self-defence. The term ?communities of resistance? springs to mind. It is a democratic rebellion in which the people spontaneously seek to organise themselves. Yet it seems a movement without clear ideology.

Let us leave the spontaneous movement for now and consider the conscious struggle for a federal republic and a united Ireland. This is not simply a constitutional matter. It is also a matter of popular culture. A federal republic is not simply a new set of constitutional arrangements between England, Scotland and Wales. It is cultural revolution in attitude and identities, which can only be the product of mass struggle and a mass movement.

Devolution, with its parliaments and assemblies in Scotland and Wales, has already begun to open up a cultural debate. Not only do we see the beginning of a new Scotland and Wales, but the question now posed as to the nature of England. Who can be part of England? Events in Oldham ask this question again. England has an identity crisis, posed most sharply for the black ?British?. Norman Tebbit?s ?cricket test? has reappeared.

The alienation of ?Asian? youth and Afro-Caribbeans is part of a wider cultural problem. A significant minority of England?s population experience the strange problem of English identity. Black people are allowed to be ?British?. The British empire has given us an identity which includes Asians and Afro-Caribbeans in the British ?family?. It was the empire that drew parents of the current generation to work in the ?mother? country. You would expect your mother to welcome you back ?home?.

The problem of this identity is its association with imperialism. An Asian can be ?British?, but only the second class British of subjugated nations. If that was not so obvious from afar, it soon made clear on arrival here. Britishness is not the future. Not only has the empire gone, but increasingly the people in Scotland and Wales reject that identity.

The true ?Brits? are probably the English. To be English, it seems you must be born in England and speak English. Most Asian youth qualify as English on those criteria. But, without doubt, to be English, you must also be white. Englishness is a racial construct. When Darcus Howe discussed this matter with Norman Tebbit, it was significant that Tebbit could accept Howe as British, but not English. Such a thing as ?black English? was inconceivable.

So here we have the crux of the matter. Black can be British, but never English. Not unless we develop a radically different concept of English identity. Perhaps this should be understood as a struggle between old England and new England. Old England is royal, aristocratic and white. It is our version of what Americans call Wasps (white Anglo-Saxon protestant). New England is republican, democratic, multi-racial, and internationalist.

New England exists not only in our theoretical minds, but in real struggles for popular sovereignty. It exists within the sick and dying corpse of corrupt and racist old England. Blair?s ?new Britain? is simply old England in a new disguise. In the rebellion of the youth of Oldham, we should seek the future - a new republican England - a new common, popular democratic culture, shared across the ethnic divide.

As we know, the Oldham rebels are not called republicans or new Englanders. They are called ?Pakistanis? - meaning of course ?not us?, ?not English?, ?outsiders?, ?aliens?, ?not part of our culture?. This is exactly how old England also defines republicanism. The youth of Oldham are certainly not conscious republicans, nor do they advocate a republic. Yet their struggle must be part of our republicanism and our republicanism must seek to fuse with them.

The culture of new England cannot be created by the ruling class, nor be imposed on the people from above. It is a product of progressive struggle in which the working class and ethnic minorities play a leading role. It cannot come about without constitutional and political change. It cannot come about without revolutionary democratic struggle. It cannot come until we break with the symbolic culture of old England.

We know that Labour, Tories and the Liberal Democrats are the parties of British imperialism and old England. We need a republican party of a new democratic and social England, a party of the working class. In case anybody misunderstands this, I am not proposing a separate party from the rest of the UK, but a party united in the fight for a federal republic and a united Ireland.